23) Customer Success

Behind-the-scenes building Vambrace AI, a company on a mission to figure out its mission. Please pardon the stream-of-consciousness style. Subscribe to follow along or visit the site here:

(typos are to make sure you’re paying attention)

Introductory Remarks

Dear Vambracers —

In last week’s post, Digital Bazaar, I explored the future of agentic commerce. I specifically put forth a vision for a world in which the “internet” effectively serves as a latent information layer upon which our agent-counterparts interact with each other to effect transactions on our behalf. It really was one big anthropomorphication of algorithms—which, come to think of it, is kind of what’s happening with AI in general. And I suppose humans are highly susceptible to anthropomorphism. Moving on!

Customer Success

In today’s post, I intend to (briefly) explore what customer success looks like to me—and the role I aim to play within the lives’ of my customers.

Background

I was fortunate to receive my first engagement extension and “upsell” with my first client, which I’m grateful for and thrilled about. He’s really been about the most perfect customer I could have asked for as I get going here—which all comes back to the importance of alignment, which I discussed several weeks ago (ref: Alignment). But it is so helpful from a motivational and performance perspective when you’re working with people that you actually really really want to see succeed—and who you feel like you can really actually help. So a recipe is starting to develop:

Recipe

• Reliability. To be a trusted confidante, advisor, and supporter of the customer. If I’m not available most of the time, and if I’m not moderately expeditiously responsive, then it’s hard to be a reliable part of the customer’s working life. There is a real balance here, and I’ve been in situations in the past where I felt I (we) were overly responsive to customers. But it’s important I think to set clear timelines, to respond any time the customer reaches out, to jump willingly into whatever fires there are whenever they start. It’s a privilege to be a trusted advisor and partner to someone—and that privileged position is my objective with every engagement I enter into.

• Honesty & Transparency. To be truthful and transparent with the customer, especially when it is hard. We can generally bucket “hard” into economic hardship and psychological hardship. I’m actually not super money-motivated, so I don’t have too much of an issue there; but I think it can be difficult to be totally honest and transparent when I feel like I’ve done stuff that makes me look bad. That’s why I’ve learned it’s the most important for me to over-communicate and take responsibility and accountability in those instances—and usually things turn out better than I expected anyway. But this is one of those table-stakes things that can be really challenging.

• Positivity. To be a “smile-meeting” on the calendar of the customer. I don’t mean a literal smile, but more of a deep psycho-spiritual smile—i.e., some positive sentiment associated with talking to me, even if the subject matter isn’t fun. Life is too short to be angry and severe, and I think I saw firsthand in my last job how you can lead with joy and kindness and positivity while still getting down to serious business. And so demonstrated zest for life I think has a real and lasting impact on how you’re perceived within the mind of the customer.

• Results. To deliver results and drive real impact for the customer. This is a bit lower on the list because, in some ways, I think it’s a natural consequences of adhering to the above three ingredients. If I’m reliably, transparently, and positively communicating with the client, then I should be able to clearly understand their challenges, and deliver results. But I want to explicitly state that results are a necessary (but not sufficient) component to a successful engagement—and if you don’t actually deliver then you can be as funny and joyful and transparent as possible but that won’t get you rehired.

Practical takeaways

The biggest takeaway for me as I search for Customer #2 and continue on this entrepreneurial journey is to not compromise on fit when it comes to customer acquisition. Near-term thinking clouds judgement and can put me in possibly-lucrative situations that aren’t actually constructive to me or the company I want to build. So much of the joy of what I’ve been doing stems from the real and human impact that I can have on the real business concern of somebody I respect.

I just really can’t overstate, to myself, the importance of fundamental alignment with the people I want to work with and the engagements I take on. It will be difficult to say no to opportunities that might feel right in the short-term, but there’s a deeper level of alignment that stocks the cabinet of customer success that I can’t ignore. And in a lot of ways I think you know it when you know it.

Looking Forward

In next week’s post, I might explore my new positioning and thinking around how I’m defining the sleeves of my business and how I’m assessing opportunities as they arise, and how all this work can be complementary to some greater goal of business-building. I’ll be sure to use more concise and professional language to accomplish that.

I hope you have a great week!

Sincerely,

Luke